The Virgin's Daughters Read online

  Snatching Kate back to the present, Elizabeth’s regal voice rose again even louder. “Stay on your knees, my lord! Do you forget who is sovereign here?”

  “How could I, Majesty?” Dudley responded, his voice as dramatically loud. “Your rank is what will part us forever as it parted us as children.”

  “I told you then that I would never marry.”

  “I thought it but the talk of a willful girl child who had not yet felt a woman’s needs . . . as you have felt them, Bess.”

  Kate heard the smacking pup! pup! sound the queen made with her lips when she was so annoyed she could not use her tongue, though she made her usual quick recovery.

  “My lord, these are now the words of your anointed sovereign and, as you see, a woman full-grown.” The spaces between the hard-bitten words resounded with frustration. “It is amazing to me that my council, Parliament and you, sir—the baker, the glover, every man in my realm—trouble me so for a quick marriage. I think it most unusual in your sex”—she halted, needing breath—“unless a woman be a ruler. Do you know me so little? Elizabeth Tudor needs no man’s guidance!”

  Dudley’s voice was calming, though his words were underlined in hurt. “That is unjust, Bess. I want you for no reasons of state, but for yourself . . . as I always have.”

  Elizabeth responded with softer words, but just as stabbing. “Then, my lord, you would not be a king?”

  Kate drew in a sharp breath of surprise, inhaling the bay leaves and rosemary strewn among the rushes on the chamber floor. Dudley had been neatly trapped, for he surely wanted to be king. It was rare for her brother-in-law to be ensnared by his own words. Kate felt sorry for his misstep.

  “I will take my leave then, Bess. I can do no good here when I am much suspected.”

  Kate heard real sorrow in Dudley’s words. He had pulled back just in time, though he seemed to move closer to success each day. Kate longed for him to win the queen. If Elizabeth gave in to her heart and married him, Kate would be safely out of the succession as soon as a child and heir to the throne was born. Still, she had to admit that Dudley’s many enemies might lead a revolt, using the Lady Katherine Grey as their reason. Could she be forced to the Tower and the block for a treason she did not support? She shivered, since that question had been answered by many falling heads, including her sister’s.

  All the ladies leaned forward, breathless to hear the queen’s answer to Dudley’s challenge.

  If there was an answer, it could not be discerned, not a sound, not a sigh.

  Certain that Elizabeth was about to collapse, Mistress Ashley rushed into the hall to wait for the doctor and his vinegar cloths, a sure cure for faintness.

  Kate came as near to the bedchamber door as she dared, listening hard to what she thought sure to hear. Always she wondered, what was it like to be a woman and a man grown and so much in love? How many times in the two years since Amy Dudley’s death had she heard Lord Dudley openly seek the queen’s hand and she refuse him, while holding him ever closer? Kate thought the tension between them now tighter than a lutestring.

  All the ladies were teetering forward when the queen’s next words reached them, calculating now, but just as forbidding. “Remain as you are, my lord. I have given you no leave to rise. I will have here but one mistress and no master!”

  “Bess, I have not earned such contempt as you show me,” Dudley said, not humbled, though his voice shook with thwarted feeling. Yet he spoke in so rich a timber that even his hard words held a thousand caresses.

  Kate turned her face away from the others because she knew it showed her own thoughts. Robert might yet tame this queen. He had half the court ladies in love with him, and he made certain Elizabeth saw it at every banquet and masque, knowing her quick to jealousy.

  But Elizabeth’s answer revealed no compassion or regret. Kate knew both would come soon, as they always did, but so far the queen seemed to resist her own desires. “Then, my lord, if you wish for my continued favor, I command you to cease this constant plaguing me. You know that I cannot marry a subject whom the people suspect of killing his own wife!”

  Kate marveled that Elizabeth could switch from one argument to another with such apparent ease, and knew that was no skill of her own. Was it a skill she should learn? She would need more than empty bluster to resist the combined forces of Cecil, the council and her mother.

  Dudley’s voice rose again in wounded anger. “Amy was ill unto death, some evil growing in her breast. She died from mischance, a fall on the stairs, or even a suicide to stop her pain, and so said the commission of inquiry, all true men. You know that well, Bess.”

  Kate heard nothing but silence then, yet in her mind’s eye she saw that the queen drew near to Dudley. His piercing dark Gypsy eyes would propel her to him.

  Finally the queen spoke in a more reasonable voice. “How can you claim to love me, Robin, when you know the people, seeing my regard for you, even now may believe I conspired in your wife’s death? And my council is set against you, even to favoring my own servant, that traitor Suffolk’s daughter Katherine, citing my father’s will that named my Grey cousins to succeed me. Would you see me undone?”

  Kate’s stomach churned. Were there no secrets from Elizabeth?

  “The people are ever changeable, Bess, and they adore you and will love you more when you are carrying our child—”

  “You are so sure, my lord. Your late wife had no children.”

  “Because I could scarce lie with her, Bess.” He paused and then his lover’s voice vibrated through the wall. “How could I make love to her when it was your face and form I saw beneath me?” His voice grew strangled, but still man-sure. “The people will do as you tell them. As for your council, grant me a position among them and I will change their minds. Bess—”

  “God’s death, Robin!” The queen was pacing again, her voice going away, then returning. “You ask for too much. Have I not made you master of the horse and of my revels, given you a pension and levies on cloth and sweet wine, openly shown my favor in every way?”

  “In all but one way, Bess, and that way alone would heal my sore heart . . . and yours.”

  Elizabeth’s voice was weary when she answered, but held some pleading. “Be patient, Rob. Someday, perhaps . . . Now, I need you to rise, and to be my sweet Robin again. I am sore troubled by these hard words between us.”

  Lady Saintloe nudged Kate slyly. “She gives him both hands. He stands and has an advantage.”

  Kate did not respond, shivering. It was all too alarming to be amusing. Every time the queen denied Dudley or any of her princely suitors and remained unmarried, Katherine felt her own head wobble.

  Dudley was not finished. His anguished words rang clear in the antechamber. “Majesty, if you will not have me, let me leave court and go to the country, where I can have some heart’s peace.”

  “Never, Robin!” Elizabeth said, her words holding a sob. “Everything is amiss with me when you are not by my side.”

  “Then, if not husband, what would you have me be . . . your little dog to pet and fondle on a mood?”

  With a low laugh, Elizabeth made light of his bitter jibe. “A little dog always runs near its mistress, and all the court will know that I must be near you.”

  Kate shivered at this effort to jolly him. Though the answer was confounding, the queen’s voice held the tremor of desire. Even Dudley in his anger could not miss such feeling, nor lose the opportunity.

  Saintloe tried to engage Kate again. “I would give up my triple strand of pearls for a peephole at this moment. Richmond Palace is full of peepholes. Why not here?”

  Kate did not need a peephole. She could imagine the scene, like a romance played on the court theater stage between quarreling lovers. Robert Dudley had risen now to his full six feet, his dark Gypsy looks overwhelming the queen’s anger, for anyone with eyes could see that she loved him to near madness. The queen would be in his arms now. All would be quiet for a time. And playful, too, for Kate
heard Dudley make little yapping sounds and the queen laughing softly, her laugh catching on a moan before all was silence.

  Kate felt a tremor come from deep inside, a memory of urgent love, a love that did not allow her to tell it. No lady present dared speak a word of what they were hearing, though they would later, their imaginings traveling throughout Whitehall with faster speed than one of the queen’s favorite Irish horses. Kate would not discuss this with anyone. She would give the queen no reason to doubt her loyalty, no reason to send her from court to her mother’s tender care.

  But there was already gossip in plenty, Kate knew, especially since Elizabeth had granted Robert Dudley an apartment next to her own. Half the court thought the queen pregnant, some foreign ambassadors even bribing the washing women to report if the queen’s monthly fluxes failed to appear. Others whispered that there was a secret passage between their rooms, though one of the ladies of the bedchamber, often Mistress Ashley, sometimes Kate herself, slept on a trundle at the foot of the queen’s bed. Unless Dudley was a night spirit, he could not enjoy the queen’s body, although who could deny the heat between them that seemed likely to burst into flame at any time? And the queen knew it, Kate thought. Though, as princess, Elizabeth had escaped every cunning trap laid for her, outwitting all who came against her. First, Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour, her stepmother Queen Catherine Parr’s husband after Henry VIII died. Thomas Seymour tried to seduce Elizabeth at fourteen; second her sister, Queen Mary, near forty and plain, jealous of Elizabeth’s youthful beauty and popularity. Later, she was vigorously questioned by many privy councilors and finally the judges in the Tower, all longing to find her guilty of treason. She had cleverly outwitted them all. Yet Elizabeth now seemed helplessly drawn to the certain danger of Lord Robert Dudley.

  Kate knew that if Dudley won her and took the throne at her side, there would be uprisings against a king whose father and grandfather had been executed for treason. Foreign Catholic princes, who already thought this queen a bastard, would never honor such a king. The people would believe the queen bewitched and the court licentious. Then the council would come for Kate to rule and do her duty. She trembled at the thought of the throne, with all its dangers, so close to her, with only Elizabeth standing between them. Kate would pray that God put marriage to a foreign prince into Elizabeth Tudor’s heart, and that she, Katherine Grey, be given the strength to withstand men, who thought to order all of a woman’s life.

  Surely even desperate love could not overcome the obstacles Elizabeth would face if she chose Dudley, and the queen knew it, when she allowed herself to know. Yet, what if the queen married him and had a child of Dudley? Would France or Spain have reason to invade to set a Catholic on the throne, forcing Englishmen to rise up against a Catholic ruler in favor of the next Protestant heir, Katherine Grey? The memory of Bloody Mary, Elizabeth’s sister, was yet fresh in the people’s minds. Kate’s thoughts swung back and forth between so many possibilities. Everywhere she saw great problems with and without royal marriage. What would be the queen’s fate? And her own? She was as ensnared in royal politics as Elizabeth was.

  Mistress Ashley rushed in with a tray of vinegar cloths.

  “I think there is no need now,” said a smirking Saintloe. “Her Grace seems quite at rest and recovered.”

  “My lady, it is amazing to me that you can know what you cannot see. Yet I do not require instruction regarding Her Majesty’s health, since I have cared for her from the cradle.”

  This was a familiar refrain in Ashley’s Devon accent, and Kate knew this old governess had great privilege. It maddened Saintloe, who looked to Kate, but she did not come to that lady’s aid.

  The doors to the queen’s privy chamber opened and Lord Dudley filled the space, tugging at his rumpled black velvet doublet with jewel buttons, pressing down on a gold thread come undone from the intricate embroidery, his short scarlet-lined cape swung back over one shoulder, his right hand on his sword hilt, a prideful peacock feather sweeping the air above his cap. He stood for a long moment, one leg thrust forward, perhaps the better to show his mauve-colored close hose and red-heeled boots, or to show more clearly that he needed no false codpiece. Was he practicing to play a king? There were audible sighs from the overdazzled ladies who, even in well-practiced modesty, could not lift their admiring eyes from such a manly display.

  “Her Majesty is at her prayers,” he said, bowing to the ladies and again to Kate, who felt a blush rise to her cheeks and received a brilliant, impudent, even triumphant grin and a slow wink in reply. He was a man, after all. What man could believe a woman, especially one of Elizabeth’s hot nature, needed no husband, and rather urgently at that?

  Kate sometimes regretted being able to see behind words and faces all the way to what people were truly thinking. She’d told no one, knowing well what happened to women who were too clever at divining. . . . They were named witches. Still, she knew that Elizabeth would dine alone today. It was so like this changeable queen to give Dudley opportunity with one hand and take it away with the other, keeping him off balance. And she liked to dine alone except for state banquets. Dudley was one of a few favorites for whom she’d break that habit. But not tonight. He had already been shown enough favor . . . perhaps too much. The thought of what that could have been sent a surge of heat to places in Kate that an unmarried maid must keep cold.

  Kate could only imagine what happened between a man and woman in the marriage bed, since her own marriage at not quite fourteen to elderly Lord Herbert, the son of the Earl of Pembroke, had been annulled, unconsummated. Before she had had her first fluxes and was beddable, her father was beheaded for scheming to make his daughter Jane queen for nine days. Within weeks of his marriage to Kate, Pembroke promptly ran from such an attainted connection, leaving her with no future save banishment to a country manor house, alone with her bitter mother, who blamed Kate for all their troubles because she could not blame herself.

  Now, as a woman of twenty and three, Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting for three years, Kate had seen and heard much of loving in the crowded court and suspected more—quite enough to fuel thoughts of sinful pleasures that kept her from restful sleep, thoughts of Edward Seymour, son of the Duke of Somerset, as he had been that bright summer morning near the water gardens at Greenwich, back when King Edward held the throne.

  Her mother had allowed her nurse, Sybil, to take her for a healthy walk away from the noisome odors of the crowded castle. Choosing a graveled path alongside a tall yew hedge, Kate became aware of a figure moving on the other side.

  “Lady Katherine?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Don’t answer, my lady,” Sybil warned.

  “It would be discourteous, Nurse,” she whispered, recognizing that voice as that of a youth who had been in and out of her life for years at court.

  “Ah, you know, nurses are not always right,” the amused male voice responded.

  Two hands parted the hedge and a blond head full of twigs and leaves above a grinning face thrust through. “My lady, I recognized your voice, though it has been two years since last we met.”

  She curtsied. “As I knew yours, my lord, though I did not know you had returned to court,” she said, hoping to sound much older than at their last meeting. She did not say aloud that he had also returned much taller, and even more handsome with his shadow of a beard. He must be sixteen now, two years older than her near-fourteen years.

  He cocked his head, still grinning. “I have finished my studies at Oxford and now King Edward has commanded my presence. He has forgiven my family for my father’s . . . treason.”

  She did not say it, but she thought it. After your father paid with his head there’s not much more to take.

  “I am saddened to find the king so ill he cannot leave his bed,” he added.

  “I pray for him,” Kate said, though she could not help a small smile at all this polite speech for the benefit of her nurse.

  He started through the hedge.

  �
�My lord, you will rend your clothes.”

  “A small price, my lady, for your company.”

  Sybil cleared her throat energetically.

  Edward pulled back and Kate heard him walk on. He waved a hand thrust through the hedge at intervals until she could not help laughing aloud, though Sybil pinched her arm.

  Kate walked faster toward him as he rounded the hedge into a restful bower at the far end, smoothing his hair and doublet, his voice raised to reach her. “When I saw you today, I could scarce believe how much the lady you’d become. You were in the presence chamber in a dark blue gown the match for your eyes.” He grinned. “But my lady Kate, you look too far from the nursery to need a nurse . . . much too far.”

  Sybil interrupted, her voice stern, though Kate saw her mouth purse to keep from smiling. “My lord Seymour, you are too forward. Lady Katherine is betrothed to the son of the Earl of Pembroke, so it is proper she have a companion to protect her reputation.”

  “From forward young men come down from Oxford?” he asked, laughing. “But surely, Mistress Sybil, you trust me as an old playmate.”

  Kate held out her hand, her eyes full of him.

  He bowed and, kissing her fingers, whispered, “I followed you when you left the great hall. Wait for me. I have a gift for you.”

  Kate’s lips parted to allow her a deep breath. Ned had always been her favorite of all the boys at court, and she’d feared never to see him again when his father fell from power. He disappeared behind the hedge and appeared once more carrying a caged bird. This time he bowed low to Sybil, his arm bent to her as if she were a grand lady. “May I offer you my protection, Mistress Nurse?”